Entire of Itself
by AmethystB
Summary: "He's dead because of you." ... "You'd rather it was you?" ... "I'd rather it was you."


**A/N: **This has taken a couple of weeks for me to put together but the narrative is very specific so it took some time. I won't preface it but I'll make some notes at the end.

I don't own _Tru Calling_.

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><p><strong>'Entire of Itself'<strong>

**by AmethystB**

_No man is an island entire of itself; every man  
>is a piece of the continent, a part of the main<br>_- John Donne.

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><p>There's a piece missing in Jensen. She knows it. She's seen it. <em>Felt <em>it.

Late at night she frantically pulls apart Davis's library, searching for the answer. She tears apart volumes on universal balance, destiny and the plurality of worlds but there's no goddamned book on what happens when your boyfriend dies and you cheat fate to bring him back.

Tru sits, defeated, on the patterned floors of the morgue. A storm rages outside so she knows her shift will be busy. She's expecting bodies, how morbid is that? She supposes with rational thought that it's her job to expect death, to want it. Maybe even hope for it. It's fate's sick game for people to die only to be brought back, and she plays her part.

Jack's words echo in her mind constantly, his haunting warning about ripple effects. She's now coming to realise what he meant.

When the power goes off the generator doesn't come on. Tru picks herself off the floor and scrambles for her phone among her belongings, but it's not there and she begins to worry. A strong gale outside rocks the foundations of the building, and thunder roars in the distance. She sees the quick white crack of lightning through the window and panic sets in.

"Funny, isn't?" Jensen's voice pierces through the darkness. "You'd think this place would have a backup."

She can't see him. She tries to sound as convincingly normal as possible. "It does. What are you doing here?"

"Came to bring you a late dinner. Are you hungry?"

When she hears his footsteps coming closer she takes a step back. "Jensen, it's one in the morning."

"I did say it was a late dinner."

The whirring noise of secondary power coming to life sounds and Tru lets out a slow breath. Down lights flicker and dimly light the room. She sees Jensen holding a plastic bag of food containers, wearing a smile. He walks closer still, leans across and kisses her.

"Davis isn't here?"

"No. Yes." Flustered, Tru struggles in his presence and decides to lie. "He's out but he'll be back soon."

"Okay, we have some time then."

"You know, I really need to be working…"

But he kisses her again, silences her. When she tries to pull away his hands clamp around her arms, holding her in place. His fingers press into her skin.

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><p>Morning comes after the storm. The stringent smell of destruction lingers in the air as a clearing breeze sweeps across the town.<p>

Davis trudges through stale puddles on his way to the morgue. It's a little before nine; he'd overslept.

Head down, he busts through the double doors. "Tru, I am so sorry I'm late. I got…distracted…"

The sight before him stops him dead, his suspended voice hovering in the ether. "Tru…?"

Blood pools crimson across the tiles, staining concrete filling as it slowly spreads. Tru, trembling, stands above it as her hot tears spill uncontrollably off her face into the mess below. Her body is hunched, spasms lurching her forward with each choked cry. She cries into the blood of Jensen, his body prone on the floor, still and lifeless. The blood leaks steadily from a cave in the back of his skull.

Davis shifts his fixated gaze from the horror on the floor to the distraught woman, to the man standing beside her with blood dripping off something in his hand.

Jack grips the heavy spanner tight, his fingers pulsating around its steel frame. He can't let it go, not yet. Not until he's sure…

"What have you done?" Davis's small voice croaks out.

Jack looks up. "Davis, I…"

"What have you done?" Davis repeats, louder. Angry now.

With a reverberation the spanner drops to the floor, cracking a tile. Davis lunges at Jack as Tru continues to retch. Jack lets himself be pulled forward by the other man's hesitant grip on his shirt, then shoved back with an angry growl from Davis.

"What have you done?" he says again, but this time he lets his grip loosen, his voice soft again, searching. "Tru? Tru, are you alright?"

Forgetting Jack, Davis holds out a hand to comfort the crying woman but Tru collapses over the body, her own bloodstained hands covering her face, temporarily blacking out the abject horror before her.

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><p>"When the police get hear we have to say it was an accident." Davis swallows the remnants of his words.<p>

The office feels cramped, smothered with a damp and heavy tension. The clock reads five past ten, the day moving forward outside but inside time has stopped. They haven't moved Jensen's body, each of them afraid of what's there.

"That's a kindness, Davis," Jack says quietly, his head bowed but eyes still directed towards the other man.

"I'm not doing this for you," Davis snaps venomously.

"I know that."

Jack tracks his eyes across the room to Tru, the silent participant in this conversation. Davis had bundled her in the swivel chair by the desk, and she'd managed to pull her knees to her chest and sit in a foetal position. The blood on her dries as the minutes tick by.

"I'll make sure the autopsy suggests an accident."

"I'll get rid of this," Jack says as he holds up the spanner, contained in a plastic bag smeared with blood.

The conversation moves around her but Tru follows, hollowly. She stares at the floor but listens, her body and mind numb.

"What were you even doing here?" Davis begins, accusingly.

"That doesn't matter…" Jack, absently.

"What does this mean for us now?" Davis, unsure.

"All's right with the universe." Jack, smug.

"Like it's a game?" Davis, angry. "Like it's all just a game and now you've won?"

"Davis," Jack, measured, "you know it's not like that. Jensen wasn't the same after he came back. His continuing to be alive destroyed the order of the universe, more so than any other life Tru has saved. He never asked for help, this was the consequence."

"Consequence?" Tru, awakening.

"Tru?" Davis moves close to comfort her, but Tru's eyes search for Jack.

"You told me there'd be consequences. You knew this would happen." It isn't a question.

Jack remains quiet for a moment as Tru's gaze bores into his own. A spark ignites. They are connected by blood now, everything is different. "I didn't know exactly what would happen. There's never been a precedent. But I knew the Jensen you cared about would be gone, and something else would take his place."

"Like a demon in one of those shows," Tru says, an absurd thought but the only one that comes to mind.

Her words echo through the small space, rebounding against the thoughts of both Davis and Jack. Jensen as Tru knew him was gone long ago, the thing in his place a soulless, empty vessel of hate and resentment. Perhaps it's easier to let Tru believe this…

"Tru," Davis begins softly, kneeling beside her chair. "I am so sorry. I didn't know Jensen was… I mean, you never said…"

Tru retreats back into herself, leaving Davis to struggle with his words and Jack to withdraw quietly from the room.

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><p>A week passes. Several more storms brew and settle on the city; snow caps the streets and turns the mood grey, a melancholy blanket of sombre contemplation.<p>

Tru emerges from the thick shadow of a tree into a clearing, the edge of a city park embracing her trenchcoat-clad form as its ambivalent inhabitant. Her shadow is stretched long across the snow-capped grass and soon it won't be there at all. The sun is low and setting on the day, barely seen through the thicket of cloud but there all the same.

By the time he comes to her the shadows are all gone, the sun deep below some indelible line. Darkness has arrived.

"You waited."

"What was I supposed to do?"

Jack lets whatever answer was forming be stifled by a sense of decency. He folds gloved hands over the metal railing that borders the park and leans into it, his back an arch. His eyes follow a brave jogger as she disappears into the thicket of trees.

"Davis got it sorted?"

Tru bristles. "Enough small-talk, Jack. Tell me why you did it."

He scoffs. "You can't be serious? Tru, he was attacking you. He was _killing _you. What was I supposed to do, sit by and watch?"

"Would've solved all your problems," she says under her breath.

Jack straightens and turns to face his adversary. "Tru, I don't want you dead. If anything, this proves it."

"What, you want me to thank you?"

"Just stop with the defensiveness, alright? We might be on opposite sides but that doesn't mean we're always enemies."

Incensed, Tru finds his eyes and holds them to hers. A fire burns. "I had to go to his funeral and sit there and listen to everybody tell me how sorry they are. His own parents were telling me. Avery broke down one line into her eulogy. Do you know how sick that is?"

He lets the words settle over them. He waits a moment before quietly interrupting the silence. "Why are you telling me that?"

"He's dead because of you."

"You'd rather it was you?"

"I'd rather it was you."

Jack inhales a long, icy breath and lets it out slowly. It whistles through his teeth in the cold. He softens. "Tru, he was dead long before now. He died in that robbery. You know this. What you buried yesterday wasn't Jensen."

"I still have the bruises," Tru says suddenly, numbly.

His mouth is dry when he tries to swallow. "What?"

"From that night. The bruises he gave me." Tru runs her hands over her arms absently. "Why did I let him do that?"

Jack, in a moment of clear reasoning, steps close and holds her shoulders steady. He feels her shaking under his touch. "Tru, listen to me… You didn't let him do anything. He was a monster, he took away your power. Look at me! You're stronger than this. Take the power back."

The fire in their eyes rages.

Tru takes a shuddering breath and forces herself to stop shaking. Her teeth grind together and she wills her resolve back into her mind. She feels the thick wool of Jack's gloves warming her neck and she brings her own bare hands to pull at the ends of his sleeves. He feels how exhausted she is, her weight hanging off fingertips as they claw into the fabric of his sweater. She'll collapse if he doesn't hold her strong.

"So," she says with a clear but uncertain voice, "where do we go from here?"

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><p><strong>AN: **I wanted to show how separated the characters were in the beginning (Tru's uncertainty about Jensen, Davis's absence from the morgue...) then slowly bring them together (Jack's appearance, the third act with him and Tru) until eventually the piece becomes whole. It fits with the Donne quote in the beginning and hopefully is clear throughout the story.

Feedback is very welcome and as always I hope you enjoyed the dark and twisty nightmarish land that is my writer's mind.


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